In days long past, the Internet was a new and marvelous thing. The web was new and shiny, but most of the real action was in irc and usenet.

Every September, a whole new batch of college students would have access to the Internet for the first time, and the signal to noise ratio would absolutely go to shit. By the end of September, things usually returned to normal, and Usenet was useful again.

In 1993, September never ended. AOL connected its entire userbase to the Internet, and things never went back to normal. Before 9/93, there was (almost) no spam, being tricked into view a goatse.cx-type image was unlikely at best, and porn was free in the alt.binaries.erotica.* newsgroups, with nobody trying to extort a credit-card number.

We still live in the September that never ended.

The internet sucks now. It was a lot better before the September that never ended.